The Effect of Self-Care Training on Learned Helplessness in Patients with Heart Failure Running

Learned helplessness is one of the factors leading to undesirable consequences in patients with heart failure. This study aims to determine the effectiveness of self-care training on learned helplessness in patients with heart failure.

This quasi-experimental study was performed on 40 heart failure patients in Class II and III referred to the Teaching and Treatment Center of Dr. Heshmat Hospital in Rasht from January 2020 to April 2020.  The patients were randomly divided into control and intervention groups (20 per each group) via randomized blocked sampling. The tool consisted of a learned helplessness questionnaire and face-to-face self-training in 6 one-hour sessions within 3 days in a week. For descriptive statistics, mean, median, standard deviation, frequency, and percent were used; also, for inferential statistics, independent t-test, paired t-test, chi-square, Mann-Whitney, and Fisher's exact test were applied.

According to the results, no significant difference was observed in the mean score of helplessness between the two groups before intervention (p= 0.531). However, after the intervention, the helplessness score was significantly less in the intervention group than the control (p= 0.048). Also, the mean scores of helplessness before and after the intervention were not significantly different in the control group (p= 0.912). However, it was significantly reduced in the intervention group (p= 0.037).

Self-care training could be effective in the learned helplessness score improved in clients with heart failure.